What are you reading the week of December 2, 2023?

I'm a little over a third of the way through Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. It's an interesting and challenging book. I'll withhold judgement until I've finished. I found this one gem in it this evening. "Historically speaking, racists have a worse record of patriotism than the representatives of all other international ideologies together..."

I just finished As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh. A story about a Syrian girl torn between her desire to leave Syria and her sense of responsibility to her country and her brother. The most vivid and direct book about war I've ever read.

About 50% done with Mesozoic Art; the proverbial easy read, and the art is wonderful. Next up will be The Jinn-bot of Shantiport and Promiscuous Media.

I'm just past the halfway point of Mapp and Lucia, the 4th entry in E.F. Benson's series of comedies about two intriguing, egotistical, meddlesome heroines, members of England's small town gentry between the World Wars. These novels are seductively delightful, great when you're looking for something on the light side, subject-wise.

I'm reading and loving Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, my first by her.

2/3 way through Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon.
historical fiction, witch trial in the Carolina Colony, 1699.

I should finish up Colm Toibin’s, The Blackwater Lightship, today. It’s very good.

Started from the library: Yesterday's Tides by Roseanna M. White
Time slip historical fiction novel set in Orackoke Island, NC. It alternates between 1914 and 1942. A few of the characters from the author's American and British-set historical fiction novels have their own stories in this book.

Paperweight
Meg Haston
4/5 stars
Stevie is a teenage girl in an eating disorder home. Along with that her brother's anniversary of his death is coming up and she plans to end her life. Well written but very sad! Off My Reading List

This week I enjoyed my third reading of Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I think it's my favourite book. Such detailed descriptions, beautiful writing, great plot....everything, plus that little je ne sais quoi that makes a book a special one.

Now I'm rereading Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea to see if I enjoy it the second time round. i'm reading - for the first time - Almost Human by Lee Berger about the discovery of H. naledi in South Africa.

Finally, there's an audiobook, which I'm embarrassed to say is about the Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting. I've never seen the show but I'm always interested in reading about offshoots of Christianity, and the IBLP is definitely that. The book is Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar.

I'm reading The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. It's good...but there is a creepy element to it.

I've recently finished Mapp and Lucia the fourth book in E.F.Benson's series of the same name about this pair of upper middle-class busybodies ruling the social sets of their respective small English towns between the World Wars. In this fourth novel (which has also sometimes been published with the title Make Way for Lucia), the two finally come together, and things do not go smoothly. The series is a set of wonderful comedies of manners, quite enjoyable if one goes in for this sort of gentle (most of the time) satire.

Next up for me will be a novel about New Orleans first published in 1946, Those Other People by Mary King O'Donnell. And that's about all I know about this book other than the facts that a) my lovely old hardcover has been in my LT library since 2011 and b) the only Legacy Library the book is included in is Louis Armstrong's.

I finished reading The American and early novel by Henry James. It was both a psychological and sociological description of an American in Paris coming up against the aristocratic society of France. He sees an aristocratic woman as the convenient ideal wife and then becomes obsessed by her once their marriage is denied.

The new thread is up over here.